Kundrat sentencing Tuesday (Feb.5)

Peggy Koronka, 29, and Teagan Ferlaak, 4, both of whom were eating at the restaurant, died as a result of injuries they sustained.

Kundrat faces a maximum of 15 years in prison.

At Kundrat's December preliminary hearing, Otsego County Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Michael Rola said that as a function of the agreement, four of five additional felonious driving counts - two-year felonies - would be dropped and a sixth such count added in place of one dropped manslaughter count. Kundrat had also been expected to plead to one count of malicious destruction of a building over $1,000 but less than $20,000 for damage done to the restaurant, an amount owners say is insufficient for the actual damage done. That count was dismissed.

Rola explained an examination of the evidence did not reveal the intent in Kundrat's actions necessary to pursue murder charges.

Information obtained last month by the Herald Times appeared to support the prosecutor's claims, quoting from Kundrat's forensic psychiatric evaluation "all available information is consistent with her claim that her intent was to harm herself alone."

Advertisement

Hesselink defined the charge of murder as requiring "proof of knowledge that death or great bodily harm would result" from her actions, while "manslaughter does not require the defendant" to know of that likelihood. The comments were in the form of a letter from Hesselink to the families.

According to Kundrat's evaluation, she had been seen at Otsego Memorial Hospital one week before the incident after asking her son's friend for a gun. She also reported trying to commit suicide three weeks prior to July 29 by trying to drown herself in Big Lake, depressed because she had recently lost her job at a Gaylord-area gas station.

Kundrat said in statements to state police after the accident she was on her way to visit her husband at the Tri-Township Waste Station July 29 when she "decided she didn't want to live anymore." She drove as far as Gingell Road before turning around her 1994 Pontiac, thinking about which building she could "hit to smash my car up." She went on to say she picked the Old Depot by chance, though she also admitted to steering toward the door, around the other vehicles in the parking lot.